ABOUT INVISIBLE SPIDERS ...
 
 
Above: REAL picture of the jovian moon IO , taken by NASA's Galileo probe
(the light green-blue background is , actually , a little section of Jupiter upper clouds)
 
 
 
    Circa two hundred years ago , in early 1982 , I was a very different person , for at least three reasons . First , I was then just twelve years old . Second , I used to wear these huge hypermetropic glasses - that , obviously , made me a certain target for quite a few "colleagues" in school. And , third , I had this wrong feeling , based in my Star Trek and Star Wars experiences , that outer space could be many things - amazing , astounding , funny - but never dangerous .

    Then , my father took me to watch OUTLAND .

    Suddenly , my expectations changed . Nothing could have prepared me for that . When Ridley Scott's Alien was released , two years before , I was too young to watch it (actually , I had to wait the re-release for at least watch this film , years later - boy , those pre-homevideo years in Brasil were FUN !). As I said , I had , to that point in time , convinced myself that outer space was something akin to a shopping mall , or amusement park : full of colorful characters , and people jumping around with laser blades , cutting off monsters limbs , and rescuing damsels in distress ...

    Now , don't take me wrong on that - I still love high adventure , space opera or not . But , there again , with OUTLAND, Peter Hyams (the film's auteur) was telling us an utterly different story .

    He was saying that Outer Space is hostile . People will die there (in some cases , in quite horrifying ways ).  Also , he was showing us that those terrible monsters - greed , hatred , loneliness (you name it) - will be up there with us . In fact , he was saying , as one of the film's taglines rightfully says , that even in Space , the ultimate enemy will still be man.

    In the beginning of the picture , one spacesuited worker hallucinates . He believes "spiders" are getting into his suit . No one around him can see these creatures . Finally , in complete terror , he finds a way to escape the spiders . I still remember my feeling about it . I thought : "Wow , this is so spooky . This film will be great !".
 
 

    Indeed.
 
 

                      Alexandre Camargo (September 25th , 1998)
 
 
                                                                                                                            back
  1